Forum Discussion
Treadmill concept : Hip Control
Most VR Treadmills I've seen so far are built around the idea of including a mobile 360° rotating part (usually a ring) that let's you face and walk in the real life direction you want.
But what if instead of letting your real life body turn to face the real life direction you want your VR avatar to turn to, the mobile part would resist and only register your will to turn, and allow you to turn your VR avatar 360°, while your real life body is always facing the same direction ?
Because your real life body is always facing the same direction :
- You can include the convenience of a conveyor belt in the VR Treadmill design (providing you a more natural walking feel then slipping on or climbing up a treadmill, and with no special shoes required to boot).
- You can use it with a TV instead of with a VR headset, for non VR games (since you would always be facing that TV).
- It works with the DK2 positional tracking webcam (since the webcam will always be facing you).
- You are no longer twisting all the wires around (specially for a wired VR headset), and you can manage with a cheap wired controller (such as a wired Razer Hydra, or even a wired mouse and keyboard) instead of requiring more expensive wireless controllers to avoid strangling yourself with them.
- The treadmill surface can be reduced (it can have a rectangular shape instead of a circular shape).
- If you include a conveyor belt you can just cheaply and accurately track the belt rotation speed to determine the accurate movement speed, instead of requiring something like kinect or Stem and some software development to track and transform the feet movement into a (less accurate) movement speed. You can even crawl on all fours in Among The Sleep if that's you want, and the conveyor belt tracking would still be getting your speed right.
Basically, you are using your hip movement in the VR treamill to turn right or left, the same way you would use your thumb on an analog thumbstick to turn right and left on a seated experience.
Of course that kind of Treadmill could still be used to track body heights (for jumping and crouching), and bending (forward and backward).
And to put the final nail in the coffin : With a conveyor belt I'm assuming it could also be built CHEAPER then the feet tracking VR Treadmills I've seen so far (from requiring no kinect/stem hardware to requiring no tracking software development, to keep track of the feet movement). And as I already mentioned, unlike other VR Treadmills it can also be used with a simple TV instead of a VR headset on non VR applications, so it's user market goes beyond the VR Treadmill market.
Two words to sum up this Treadmill concept : Hip control.
PS : This concept COULD also be used to achieve an (inferior) seated treadmill, basically you have to (1) keep track of the hip rotation (2) have a Kinect/Stem/Conveyor belt/whatever system to keep track of your walking speed, which could be a mini walking up treadmill placed under your feet (only slightly bigger then the size of your feet), that could be placed under any ordinary chair or be part of a full VR chair design... It could even be shaped as a pair of bicycle pedals attached to a VR recliner chair, as long as it is designed to let your turn your Hip (even only a little bit), so you can use that part of your body to control your left/right turns, while leaving the rest of your body free to do everything else that it usually does.
But what if instead of letting your real life body turn to face the real life direction you want your VR avatar to turn to, the mobile part would resist and only register your will to turn, and allow you to turn your VR avatar 360°, while your real life body is always facing the same direction ?
Because your real life body is always facing the same direction :
- You can include the convenience of a conveyor belt in the VR Treadmill design (providing you a more natural walking feel then slipping on or climbing up a treadmill, and with no special shoes required to boot).
- You can use it with a TV instead of with a VR headset, for non VR games (since you would always be facing that TV).
- It works with the DK2 positional tracking webcam (since the webcam will always be facing you).
- You are no longer twisting all the wires around (specially for a wired VR headset), and you can manage with a cheap wired controller (such as a wired Razer Hydra, or even a wired mouse and keyboard) instead of requiring more expensive wireless controllers to avoid strangling yourself with them.
- The treadmill surface can be reduced (it can have a rectangular shape instead of a circular shape).
- If you include a conveyor belt you can just cheaply and accurately track the belt rotation speed to determine the accurate movement speed, instead of requiring something like kinect or Stem and some software development to track and transform the feet movement into a (less accurate) movement speed. You can even crawl on all fours in Among The Sleep if that's you want, and the conveyor belt tracking would still be getting your speed right.
Basically, you are using your hip movement in the VR treamill to turn right or left, the same way you would use your thumb on an analog thumbstick to turn right and left on a seated experience.
Of course that kind of Treadmill could still be used to track body heights (for jumping and crouching), and bending (forward and backward).
And to put the final nail in the coffin : With a conveyor belt I'm assuming it could also be built CHEAPER then the feet tracking VR Treadmills I've seen so far (from requiring no kinect/stem hardware to requiring no tracking software development, to keep track of the feet movement). And as I already mentioned, unlike other VR Treadmills it can also be used with a simple TV instead of a VR headset on non VR applications, so it's user market goes beyond the VR Treadmill market.
Two words to sum up this Treadmill concept : Hip control.
PS : This concept COULD also be used to achieve an (inferior) seated treadmill, basically you have to (1) keep track of the hip rotation (2) have a Kinect/Stem/Conveyor belt/whatever system to keep track of your walking speed, which could be a mini walking up treadmill placed under your feet (only slightly bigger then the size of your feet), that could be placed under any ordinary chair or be part of a full VR chair design... It could even be shaped as a pair of bicycle pedals attached to a VR recliner chair, as long as it is designed to let your turn your Hip (even only a little bit), so you can use that part of your body to control your left/right turns, while leaving the rest of your body free to do everything else that it usually does.
14 Replies
- Without the treadmill actually being omnidirectional, you wouldn't be able to walk any direction, just forward and backwards. Plus turning your body doesn't quite works the way you describe it - instead of rotating your hips, you shift your mass centre to the side so that you gain centripetal acceleration from earth gravity, that turns your walking direction. Similarry to the way an airplane turns by misaligning lift vector with gravity vector by rolling, creating centripetal superpositional force vector that continiously pulls an airplane to the side, which results in a circular turn. If you stay in place it would work though.
"raidho36" wrote:
Without the treadmill actually being omnidirectional, you wouldn't be able to walk any direction, just forward and backwards.
Your real life body wouldn't be able to walk any direction, but your Avatar would.
In fact an omnidirectional treadmill would allow you to turn your Avatar even if it shouldn't be able to, while this kind of Treadmill could prevent you from turning your Avatar if it shouldn't be able to, and provide your body with the heptic feedback that you can't turn no matter how hard you try."raidho36" wrote:
Plus turning your body doesn't quite works the way you describe it
It wouldn't work exactly like walking (well at least turning certainly wouldn't), but would still beat climbing up a Virtuix Omni or slipping on a Cyberith Virtualizer, even more true when moving in a straight line (with a lot of the walking and running being done in a straight line, at least in real life).
The idea is that your HIP is always facing the direction you are walking, or more precisely facing the direction you want to walk to, so to determine what direction you want your Avatar to walk to, you can track your one rotating hip instead of tracking what your two feet are doing. And while that may not quite be true, it's might be a close enough representation to be used.- I remember a similar project that was talked about and prototyped long ago here..
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15191 - Or you can do the opposite.
Having the user facing the same direction,
and having him, by his feet, turn and move the floor.
This is a complete reverse thinking of the ODT.
You would need adherence on feet instead of sliperry.
Like the trackball is the opposite of computer mouse.
Pro:
You can do any movment you wish
you always face same direction
Cons :
You need a more complex floor system.
In fact, It would even work with sliperry shoes as well.
by rotating the floor instead of rotating the user. - If the disk is slippery enough it dose not need to turn you just need accurate enough foot tracking. But I suspect the lack of real world rotation could lead to dizziness.
- it could work. you would need to wear a hip rotation sensing device.
Though the treadmill would have to be very light in order to rotate it fast because your hip rotation speed is freaking fast as your change your direction by 90° from a still-stand position.
If the odt construction only weigh 10kilos or so and would have good brakes.....
Definitely worth a try.
I checked mechanics a bit. Its more the front facing direction of your pelvis that changes not the hip.
the hip joint of the leg standing still rotates but the leg doesnt change direction. - Next gen would be more of a *Shoe type* attachment + a belt and your 5.1 surround are now sensors.
Without going into vast detail as it is hurting my brain trying to figure out the math for the physics and gravity ratios in 30 seconds.
Simplize for positive results. Light, efficient and Idealy work with inches and can withstand 225lbs minimum.
Good start. Nice drawing board idea. Oculus will be 360° in the next few years so keep that in mind
+1 - I did something similiar a year or so back with a wii board, using the balance changes that occur with movement to control an avatar in VR
It worked pretty well but like most things in VR one problem solved reveals yet another problem. Using your body for movement creates certain expectations, if you shift to move forward you expect to move forward, yet your avatar may collide with a wall, or other object, and the lack of immediate physical feedback telling you that you have hit something and the direction of the obstruction creates a very unsettling, potentially nightmare level of terror effect.
We've all had those nightmares where you are running your hardest but you just don't go anywhere, that is what it's like hitting an obstacle in vr with no feedback as to what has caused you to stop moving.
After my experiments with a wiiboard something like the omni looks like a machine for inducing terror. - @aabel that is the kind of control that I was thinking would be ideal for DK2. Nice to see that it can work for both turning and strafing. Presumably you have only been able to test it with DK1, but did you find that the lean to move helps reduce motion sickness much?
- Yeah it helps a ton. Variable movement speed is also extremely nice. Being able to do things like make it require more physical effort to climb a hill is pretty neat as well.
The major hurdle to overcome with this solution is collision feedback. In the abscence of clear feedback that you have hit something our natural tendancy is to keep leaning, put more weight into the balance shift to the point of falling over. This is clearly something that needs to be remedied, I am hoping some binaural audio cues will do the trick.
